Top Shelf’s Chris Staros and Brett Warnock announced late yesterday that they had entered into “a capital investment deal with new media entrepreneur John S. Johnson, and independent film producer Anthony Bregman.” Johnson and Bregman’s production company Likely Story have bought a 33% stake in Top Shelf, with Likely Story getting first-look rights on Top Shelf titles for possible movie or television deals. Obviously while its good to see investment in a great Indy publisher a lot of readers can be understandably wary about such schemes as outside investment and movie deals has lead others into various comprimises in the past.
Reading the statement on the Top Shelf site though, it looks from here like Chris, Brett, John and Anthony have made a pretty good deal. For starters Chris explains that Anthony is a personal friend of several years standing, both committed to bringing interesting work to an audience because they thought it was good work rather than purely for commercial reasons, so they are on a similar wavelength. And the investment deal offers Top Shelf a healthy funding shot and more security but leaves Chris and Brett firmly in charge of the company as majority shareholders; they had been approached by other investors previously but felt they wanted to take the publisher in different directions from their vision for TS and had turned them down, until Anthony introduced them to his friend John, a new media entrepreneur who had mentioned his interest in becoming more involved with quality comics.
“Behind the scenes, Top Shelf has been presented with several investment proposals over the years, but most of them were either proposals to buy out the company, purchase a controlling interest, or use the name of the company to do something different than what we had built our reputation on. What we really wanted, and what we have now, are people who believe in what we do and want to help it grow without changing what we are doing. The deal that is in place now leaves Brett and me firmly in control of the company, and simply adds the capital, resources, and connections for new media and film that John and Anthony bring to the table,” Chris Staros.
(Alex Robinson’s character Andy finds himself inexplicably back in his high school days in Too Cool To Be Forgotten, by and (c) Alex Robinson, published Top Shelf)
The press release also goes on to say that one of the first Top Shelf titles which may be up for possible development by Likely Story is Alex Robinson’s Too Cool To Be Forgotten, which was one of my favourite reads of 2008 (Alex being a longtime favourite of mine), a work which, I think, would make a great American Indy movie as I said when the idea was first mooted a couple of months back. All in all as deals go this sounds like a pretty good one from the released statement – Top Shelf has already been working on some great digital projects like Top Shelf 2.0 and it seems likely John’s new media experience will be a boon in that direction, working with a friend and fellow independent on film/TV development sounds better than signing over rights to some faceless suits in a large studio and, most importantly, it sounds like while they are getting welcome investment Top Shelf is going to continue to be the exceptionally fine independent comics publisher that we love, which is good news for readers, including many of the FP crew, as they have consistently proven themselves to be one of the most interesting comics publishers out there. Best of luck to all involved.
Thu, Jan 14, 2010
Comics and cartoons, Film, TV and radio